Supplication (May), by Nour Abi-Nakhoul, is hallucinatory horror novel set deeply in the consciousness of a woman exploring a changed and frightening world. A madcap, witty account of an aspiring author's relationship with an infamous and provocative mentor, Jean Marc Ah-Sen's new novel is Kilworthy Tanner (May). A queer writer travelling through India can't escape the regrets of his past, nor the impending ruin of his present in Indian Winter (May), by Kazim Ali. A beautifully imagined story collection set largely in Nigeria, Perfect Little Angels (April), by Vincent Anioke, explores themes of masculinity and repressed desires through the lens of (un)conditional love

Emily Austin follows up Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead with Interesting Facts About Space (January), a fast-paced, hilarious, and ultimately hopeful novel for anyone who has ever worried they might be a terrible person. First published in a limited edition in 1998, Guy Babineau’s Channel Surfing in the Sea of Happiness (May) is a funny, poignant, and timelessly provocative collection of short stories where misfit characters find themselves adrift in an increasingly absurdist world. Celebrated writer Carleigh Baker follows up her debut collection Bad Ideas with Last Woman (March). In I Will Ruin You (May), the latest by bestseller Linwood Barclay, a teacher’s act of heroism inadvertently makes him the target of a dangerous blackmailer who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. And in a pre-apocalyptic world not unlike our own, a young Instagram poet starts an affair with a California billionaire who’s promised a time machine that will make everything normal again—whatever that means—in Mood Swings (May), by Frankie Barnet.

The beautifully crafted, thrillingly-told story of two outsiders striving to find themselves as their worlds collapse in chaos and violence, Wild Houses (March) is the long-anticipated debut novel from award-winning and critically-acclaimed short story writer, Colin Barrett. The latest Priscilla Tempest Mystery is Princess of the Savoy (March), by Ron Base and Prudence Emery, in which reluctant Canadian crime-fighter Tempest joins forces with her would-be lover—the ink-stained scribe of Fleet Street, Percy Hoskins—on a danger-filled adventure to untangle a deadly web of conspiracy that could get them both killed. Andrew Battershill follows up Pillow with Pet, Pet, Slap (June), in which Rocky meets Elmore Leonard meets Miranda July as Pillow Wilson, a past-his-prime boxer, trains for his last title shot, and shenanigans ensue. And Coexistence (May), by Billy-Ray Belcourt, is a collection of intersecting stories about Indigenous love and loneliness from one of contemporary literature’s most boundless minds.

A complex work of literary speculative fiction that spans centuries, The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits (May), by Ben Berman Ghan, starts in 2014 with a winged alien sowing the seeds of a strange forest on the moon. Christophe Bernard’s The Hollow Beast (April), a finalist for the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction in French, and winner of the Quebec-Ontario Prize, the Quebec Booksellers' Prize and the Jovette-Bernier Priz, appears in English translation by Lazer Lederhendler. From the Governor General’s Award-shortlisted and Journey Prize-winning Shashi Bhat comes Death By a Thousand Cuts (April), a breathtaking and sharply funny collection about the everyday trials and impossible expectations that come with being a woman. And Anthony Bidulka is back with From Sweetgrass Bridge (June), which begins on a perfect prairie summer evening when Dustin Thomson—the Saskatchewan Roughriders' first Indigenous quarterback—goes missing, with Merry Bell P.I. hired to find the football star, seeking answers while dealing with her continuing transition, swelling loneliness, a floundering career, her well-meaning crossdressing assistant, and having to decide whether the people in her life are friend or foe.

Barbara Black follows up the celebrated Music From a Strange Planet with Little Fortified Stories (May), a collection of very short stories in which curious worlds are encapsulated like a series of snow globes, swirling with deep emotion and teeming with strangeness. Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness (April) is Danila Botha’s third collection of short fiction, in which she observes, with her signature vulnerability and humour, what it’s like to struggle to find your place in the world. And The Head: A Novella (May), by Robyn Braun, is a surreal and penetrating tale of academia, work life, and surviving trauma.  

Married and divorced in her 20s, looking for friendship in her 30s, and contemplating pregnancy at 40, our narrator wonders if she’s going through life out of order, but Alice, The Turtle, The Kid, and other beloveds show her that motherhood is more than giving birth, art is never finished, and love is not linear in These Songs I Know By Heart (May), by Erin Brubacher. Carol Bruneau follows up Brighten the Corner Where You Are (a novel about the life of Maud Lewis) with Threshold (April), her first collection of short stories since the Thomas Raddall Award-nominated A Bird on Every Tree. And alongside eccentric DJs, misanthropic skaters, and denim-clad ghosts, Baby explores her sexual and cultural identity in Taslim Burkowicz’s coming-of-age tale, Sugar Kids (April), an homage to the subcultures animating the '90s.

Jowita Bydlowska's Monster (April) is a feminist manifesto exploring sexual awakening, motherhood, immigrant trauma and the power of female rage. Weaving the women's stories across multiple timelines, Charlene Carr's new novel We Rip the World Apart (January) reveals the ways that simple choices, made in the heat of the moment and with the best of intentions, can have deeper repercussions than could ever have been imagined, especially when people remain silent. Myriam J.A. Chancy follows up What Storm, What Thunder with Village Weavers, confronting the silences around class, race, and nationality, charts the moments when lives are irrevocably forced apart, and envisions two girls who try to break inherited cycles of mistrust and find ways back into each other’s hearts.

From bestselling authors Janie Chang and Kate Quinn comes The Phoenix Crown (February), a thrilling and unforgettable narrative about the intertwined lives of two wronged women, spanning from the chaos of the San Francisco earthquake to the glittering palaces of Versailles. Mothers spurn guilt, couples seek pleasure alone, and friends sit topless in parks, slack off, or dream about building a shipping-container home, and look to the sky hoping to find a place for people like them in Evie Christie's Carthaginian Peace & Other Stories (February). Broughtupsy (January), by Christina Cooke, takes intersectionality and gives it a face, name, and head full of braids in this brilliant exploration of identity and love.

Amber Cowie's latest is Off-Season (May), a destination thriller about a woman who accompanies her new husband to a remote hotel to do renovations—and uncovers deadly secrets behind every door. Richard Cumyn returns with This Lark of Stolen Time (May), set during a dispiriting March snowstorm with all four of the Lauder Jones children are living at home again—a rare moment of congress before the family dissolves. And through a hard Nova Scotia winter, in Susanna Cupido's Window of Tolerance (June), Marta embarks on a quest that takes her to doctors’ offices, psychiatric institutions and the darker side of Halifax, after a troubled, enigmatic acquaintance from her therapy group goes missing.

In Disembark (May), award–winning Jen Currin presents remarkable and sometimes magical new stories of queer friendship and love, against the backdrop of city life. What’s Not Mine (April), by Nora Decter—who received the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in 2019 her YA novel How Far We Go and How Fast—explores inheritance, addiction, and survival when the odds are against you. And in experimental lit veteran Brian Dedora’s third novel The Apple in the Orchard (March), prose fragments and narrative threads come in and out of focus as, on a winter’s night, a reveller in an upscale Toronto restaurant begins the most dangerous of things: a journey into memory.

John Delacourt's The Black State (April) is not only a political thriller exposing our darkest foreign adventurism, but an edge-of-your-seat race against time. William Deverell’s latest Arthur Beauchamp novel is The Long Shot Trial (May), in which Beauchamp takes a break from the courtroom to write a memoir so he can set the record straight about a headline murder case he fought as a young lawyer in 1966. And Tony Vicar is wrestling against the ordinary patterns his life has fallen into until dark secrets and a dangerous woman from the past threaten to upend it all in The Vicar Vortex (February), by Vince R. Ditrich, the third book in a series.

The Tenants (June), by Pat Dobie, was winner of the 45th annual 3-Day Novel Contest, and a view inside the homes of some of Vancouver's most vulnerable inhabitants as their lives intersect and diverge atop its shifting soil. Tomas Dobosy's latest is Stasio: A Novel in Three Parts (April), a detective novel—presented in three distinct novellas—tracing the ever deepening involvement of protagonist Anthony de Stasio in a series of political nightmares. Crisp, and direct, Kit Dobson's We are Already Ghosts (May) is a turn-of-the-millennium family epic that documents and challenges Canadian life.

By the author of the award-winning The Ghost Garden, Susan Doherty's Monday Rent Boy (March) is a bravely imagined, deeply empathetic novel of two adolescent boys bound by friendship and a terrible secret. In the sparkling and empathetic novel The Game of Giants (May), Marion Douglas digs into a young mother's uncertainty, fear, and hard-won wisdom as she and her son—an odd and lovable giant of unpredictability—forge a path forward. And Lorne Elliott's deep and loving knowledge of Canada, and of our music scene, permeates the road-trip novel In A Few White Lies (April), his satire this time channeled exquisitely through Thea, a whip-smart, feisty, resourceful, and haiku-writing teenage narrator, and, as always, compassionately and poignantly humane and laugh-out-loud hilarious.

From Ian Ferguson and Will Ferguson, bestselling authors of I Only Read Murder, comes Mystery in the Title (May), a side-splitting mystery of epic movie-of-the-week proportions, featuring the unstoppable Miranda Abbott. Alice Fitzpatrick's debut novel is Secrets in the Water (June), in which a young woman decides to track down her aunt's killer after half a century. And the latest from acclaimed writer Anne Fleming, Curiosities (April) is an inventive, thrilling genre-and gender-bending historical novel with a modern twist.

Delicate like lacework with dark threads running through it, Pale Shadows (February), by Dominique Fortier, illustrated by Rhonda Mullins, picks up the story of Emily Dickinson where Paper Houses left off, to explore the place of women in history, their creativity, and the enduring power of Dickinson’s poetry. Bestseller Carley Fortune is back with This Summer Will Be Different (May). And  Nora Gold returns with a book comprising two novellas, In Sickness and In Health / Yom Kippur in a Gym (March). 

Spencer Gordon's A Horse at the Window (June) is  genre-bending collection of dramatic monologues shining a light on the anxious, self-directed gaze that defines contemporary consciousness. From bestselling author Genevieve Graham comes The Secret Keeper (April), a gripping World War II novel about two sisters who join the war effort—one as a codebreaker and the other as a pilot—and the secrets that threaten to tear them apart. And Robert J. Sawyer calls Eris (June), by Larry Gaudet, “a blistering look at what our online and offline lives have devolved into at the hands of our corporate tech overlords and their lackeys in government.”

The Rasmussen Papers (May) is a cunning, sharply insightful novel about ambition and subterfuge from Connie Gault, the author of the Giller-longlisted novel A Beauty. The Pushcart Prize-nominated Elliott Gish’s Grey Dog (April) is a subversive literary horror novel that disrupts the tropes of women’s historical fiction with delusions, wild beasts, and the uncontainable power of female rage. And from Joanna Goodman, the bestselling author of The Home for Unwanted Girls and The Forgotten Daughter comes The Inheritance (March), a compulsively readable mother-daughter story in which two women who share a difficult past must come to together to claim the future they deserve.

Following her acclaimed debut Friendly Fire, Lisa Guenther skillfully picks up the story with All That's Left (May) a pressing account of a life wrecked by trauma, and rebuilt brick by brick with joy, love, and friendship. A work of literary horror in the gothic tradition, The Invisible Hotel (March), by Yeji Y. Ham, is a startling, speculative tale of political and ideological adolescence in the long afterlife of the Korean War. And Hotel Beringia (May), by Mix Hart, is at once mystery and comedy, set in the Yukon during a pivotal time for the role of women in the North and the drive to exploit the riches of the Arctic and its peoples.

A darkly humorous family saga woven around tarot cards and a mixtape of '80s songs, Michelle Hébert's Every Little Thing She Does is Magic (May) is a heady mix of music, ghosts, love, and nostalgia. Sydney Hegele follows up the award-winning The Pump with Bird Suit (May), a tourist town folk tale of stifled ambition, love, loss, and the bird women who live beneath the lake. And a lost tarot card is the key to unravelling decades of secrets in The Lost Tarot (June), dazzling novel about art and deception, from Governor General's Award–winning author Sarah Henstra.

Catherine Hernandez’s latest novel is Behind You (May), inspired by a horrifying chapter in Canadian history, is a chilling portrayal of the insidiousness of rape culture, daringly turning the Whodunit genre on its head by asking, "Who hasn't done it?" Sheila Heti's releases Alphabetical Diaries (February), a sublime and probing investigation of the self. And literary dream-team Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti release Burying the Lead (March), in which a big-city journalist joins the staff of a small-town paper in cottage country to find a community full of secrets … and murder.

In the third and final novel in the Lund series, Karen Hofmann's Where We Live (March) continues the story of four siblings, separated in childhood, reunited and now middle-aged, as they navigate urban Vancouver life, work, relationships, and parenting in the late 2010s. A young fundamentalist Mormon girl facing a forced marriage escapes her strict, polygamist community and comes of age in the tumultuous 1960s in Leslie Howard's Celestial Wife (April), a captivating novel inspired by shockingly true events. And a literary speculative novel, Scott Alexander Howard's The Other Valley (February) is set in an unnamed valley where bereaved residents can petition to cross a forbidden border to see their lost loved ones again.

Mark Huebner flexes his comedic muscles in Off the Cuff (February), a wordless graphic novel that explores the competitive job market many young people face and the unexpected lengths to which they'll go to launch a career. Inspired by his journals and writing, Helen Humphreys' moving new novel Followed by the Lark (February) inhabits the life and mind of renowned nineteenth-century naturalist, poet and abolitionist Henry David Thoreau, revealing the deep connections between his time and our own. And award-winner Joanne Jackson's latest novel is Sunset Lake Resort (June), about Ruby who—despite the condition of the property and rumours it is haunted— decides to move to Sunset Lake Resort, determined to find out why her father bought it, and why he left it to her.

In Avik Jain Chatlani's explosive debut novel, This Country Is No Longer Yours (May), a chorus of disparate voices comes together to explore how idealists and opportunists betray ordinary people in war-torn Peru. Butler-detective Helen Thorpe returns to help a wannabe influencer get her life in order—and solve the murders of her fellow content creators—in A Meditation on Murder, the sequel to Mindful of Murder by bestselling author Susan Juby.  And Eva Jurczyk's That Night in the Library (June) is a chilling literary mystery that transports readers to a world where secrets live in the dark, books breathe fears to life, and the only way out is to wait until morning.

From internationally bestselling author Daniel Kalla comes High Society (May), a twisty psychological thriller about a pioneering psychiatrist hiding dark secrets. A timely and riveting story of reclamation, matriarchies, and the healing ability of traditional teachings, Nauetakuan: a Silence for a Noise (June), by Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, translated by Howard Scott, underscores how reconnecting to lineage and community can transform Indigenous futures. And Disobedience (May), by Daniel Sarah Karasik, is a remarkable work of queer and trans speculative fiction that imagines how alternative forms of connection and power can refuse the violent institutions that engulf us.

Firekeeper (April), the fourth book from acclaimed writer Katłıà, brings a Northern Indigenous perspective to the destructive effects of ongoing colonialism to a coming-of-age tale addressing intergenerational trauma by reclaiming culture, belonging and identity. The latest from Greg Kearney (ReLit-winner and Lambda Literary finalist) is An Evening with Birdy O'Day (April), a funny, boisterous, and deeply moving novel about aging hairstylist Roland's childhood friend whose fevered quest for pop music glory drives them apart. Splinter & Shard (May) the debut story collection by acclaimed filmmaker-turned-writer Lulu Keating, offers an uncompromising journey into what it means to be human. And Conor Kerr, the Giller Prize-longlisted author of Avenue of Champions, returns with Prairie Edge (April), a frenetic, propulsive crime thriller that doubles as a sharp critique of modern activism and challenges readers to consider what “Land Back” might really look like.

Through luminescent light, ancestral paths, and a Caribbean spirit-inflected world, Naniki (January), by Oonya Kempadoo, explores the musings and inner workings of the deep blue—the Caribbean Sea—and its shape-shifting sea beings. She’s an honours student with ambitious graduate school plans and he’s a jock with only hockey on his mind, but once their worlds collide, their connection is hot enough to melt an ice rink in Collide (May), by Bal Khabra. And in Sharon King-Campbell’s play Dayboil (March), four middle-aged women meet at Kathy’s house in rural Newfoundland for their weekly cup of tea and gossip when tragic news disrupts their banter: Kathy’s husband has killed himself and, abruptly, the threads that hold their comfortable community life together begin to unravel.

Reminiscent of Elena Ferrante and the NYT magazine feature “Who is the Bad Art Friend?”, The Art of Vanishing (June), by Lynn Kutsukake, is an intimate, explosive story of creativity and friendship between two young Japanese women in 1970s Tokyo. Equal parts sexy and profane, unsentimental, and gut-wrenching, How It Works Out (May), by Myriam Lacroix, is a genre-bending, arresting, uncanny exploration of queerness, love, and our drive for connection, in any and all possible worlds. Originally published in 1974, Yesterdays (June), by Harold Sonny Ladoo, is nominally the story of one man’s attempt to launch a Hindu Mission from Trinidad to convert the heathen Christians of Canada, and one of the great lost English-language novels of the previous century. Intense and immersive, Kiss the Undertow (June), by Marie-Hélène Larochelle, translated by Michelle Winters, is a psychologically gripping account of endurance pushed to extremes.

A coming-of-age story that examines race, immigration, duty and friendship, Edward Y.C. Lee's The Laundryman's Boy (April) is an enduring and moving tale about early newcomers to Canada and their struggle to succeed against all odds. The OC meets The Unhoneymooners in Robin Lefler's shipwreck rom-com, Not How I Pictured It (April), when the reunited cast of a hit show get stuck on a deserted island with nothing but their complete lack of survival skills, simmering drama and the sneaking suspicion that someone is up to no good. And Canisia Lubrin's debut fiction, Code Noir (February) combines immense literary and political force, its structure departing from the infamous real-life “Code Noir,” a set of historical decrees originally passed in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire. The original Code had 59 articles; Code Noir has 59 linked fictions—vivid, unforgettable, multi-layered fragments filled with globe-wise characters who desire to live beyond the ruins of the past.

From Nicole Lundrigan, the acclaimed author of An Unthinkable Thing and Hideaway, comes A Man Downstairs (March), a breath-stopping novel of suspense about a woman tormented by memories of the past and threatened by long-held secrets in the present. The open-and-shut case of the Fatal Flapper just won’t stay closed in John MacLachlan Gray's Mr. Good-Evening (April), a  thrilling and immersive novel of 1920s Vancouver. And Guy Vanderhaeghe calls Dave Margoshes' new novel A Simple Carpenter (May) "a tale that is part mystery and part fable that blends present day realities with myth and magic... [A] novel as beguiling as it is ambitious."

An understated but fierce novel of family, sport and growing up, Adrian Markle’s debut Bruise (May) tells the story of an injured MMA fighter who returns to his coastal hometown. Inspired by true stories of courageous women and the German resistance during WWII, Heather Marshall follows up her smash hit debut Looking for Jane with The Secret History of Audrey James (June). Seeking uncanny, fun, experimental, creepy, sarcastic, playful, vulgar, inventive, sexual, weird, sweet, and evocative works, editors Samia Marshy and Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch set out to collect Arab and Arabophone queer writing, and the result is the anthology El Ghourabaa (March), brimming with gems by emerging and established writers and an homage to the lineages and complexities of queer Arab life. 

A fast-moving tale of deceit and intrigue, Paul Nicholas Mason's To Our Graves (April) is a thrilling crime novel set in an exclusive Canadian private school. Amy Mattes' Late September (April) is an intimate queer coming-of-age tale exploring the nuances of love, trauma and mental health. Elaine McCluskey’s new novel is The Gift Child (March), a funny, poignant, sure-shot novel, populated with a community of petty criminals, beloved broadcasters, undercover intelligence agents, and more.

From Amy McCulloch, bestselling author of Breathless comes Midnight (January), another pulse-pounding thriller: a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Antarctica to camp beneath the midnight sun becomes a desperate battle for survival against a killer determined to follow their prey to the very ends of the earth. All Things Seen and Unseen (April), by R.J. McDaniel, is an incisive reflection on identity and wealth, and a refreshing racial queer story of survival. And from Beverly McLachlin, former Chief Justice of Canada and bestselling author of Full Disclosure comes Proof (May), another razor-sharp thriller featuring defense attorney Jilly Truitt as she defends a high-profile mother accused of kidnapping her own child.

Three members of an elite team of operatives are living in disgraced exile after a mission gone horribly wrong, but are thrown back into action when the solar system's Jupiter Station is attacked from within in Pale Grey Dot (May), by Don Miasek. Sent to cover bank robber Red Ryan’s daring prison break, a young Ernest Hemingway becomes fascinated with the convict in Marianne K. Miller’s debut novel We Were the Bullfighters (May). And Sarah Mintz's NORMA (May) is a tart, unhinged flail into widowhood, the parasocial, and some of the more careworn corners of the internet.

Maya Mirza’s unlucky-in-love past seems to be turning around in Maya's Laws of Love (March), by Alina Khawaja, when she ends up in an arranged marriage to the on-paper perfect man. But as she heads to her wedding in Pakistan, she finally meets the man of her dreams—and what could be more unlucky than that? Bestseller Rick Mofina's latest thriller is Someone Saw Something (April). And in We Speak Through the Mountain (June), a powerful follow-up to her award-winning novella, Premee Mohamed explores the conflicts and complexities of this post-apocalyptic society and asks whether humanity is doomed to forever recreate its worst mistakes.

Hides (June), by Rod Moody Corbett, is a novel of family and politics that distinguishes itself through its careful intermingling of seriousness and comedy, and its surreal but eerily plausible setting. Land of No Regrets (May), a debut by Sadi Muktadir, a finalist for the Thomas Morton Memorial Prize in Literary Excellence, is a heart-wrenching story of four students who find hope and kinship amidst the challenges of growing up at a harrowing madrasa in rural Ontario. Set in Paris, Jasmina Odor’s The Harvesters (May) is an offbeat and sweet novel about family, loss and recovery, and the magic of memory. And in Dayspring (April), Anthony Oliveira brings to vibrant, glorious life the gospel according to the disciple Christ loved—his companion in the days before the crucifixion, the only instrument that remembers with fidelity his sound.

Black Cake meets Death at a Funeral in Pride and Joy (March), Louisa Onomé's adult debut, a heartwarming and hilarious novel about three generations of a Nigerian Canadian family grappling with their matriarch’s sudden passing while their auntie insists that her sister is coming back. Like songs on a concept album, each story in Heather Paul's riveting Love and Other Disappointments (April) stands alone and in conversation with the others. Logan Paylor's debut The Cure for Drowning is not only a brilliant, boundary-pushing love story but a Canadian historical novel that boldly centres queer and non-binary characters in unprecedented ways. And The Signs of No (February), the debut novel by poet Judith Pond, is a story of guilt and grief, of finding one’s footing in middle life, and of discovery and reinvention.

A powerful debut about the lives of women and girls caught in the orbit of the military, Sara Power’s Art of Camouflage (February) introduces readers to characters who trespass beyond the boundaries of their own realities to discover who they are within someone else's narrative. The Education of Aubrey McKee (May) is the much-anticipated continuation of Alex Pugsley’s debut, a campus novel in which the city of Toronto itself is the institute of higher education, and a glittering story about learning how to love. And Peacocks of Instagram (May), by Deepa Rajagopalan, is an engrossing, witty yet devastating stories about diasporic Indians that deftly question what it means to be safe, to survive, and to call a place home.

Heidi Reimer's debut The Mother Act (April) is a stylish page-turner that looks at what it means to be a devoted mother and a devoted artist—and whether it is possible to be both. In Sabrina Reeves’ debut, Little Crosses (March), a daughter examines her complicated relationship with a charismatic, narcissistic mother who now lives with alcohol-related dementia. Dame Polara has spent her life running from her father’s shady job as a PI, but now she must rely on the skills he taught her if she’s to protect herself and the people she care about most in the book in Greg Rhyno’s new series, Who by Fire (April).

A Toronto homicide detective is attacked at his doorstep when his investigation into possible links between the Nazi occupation of Italy and the murder of his brother decades later gets too close to the truth in What We Buried (February), a new crime thriller from bestselling author Robert Rotenberg. Jeffrey Round is back with a new mystery novel, The Sulpher Springs Cure (March), set 70 years  after 14-year-old Violet McPherson’s treachery left one person dead and caused a dreadful scandal. And What They Said About Luisa (May), by Erica Rummel, is an enchanting tale of the complex and fascinating life of Luisa Abrego of Seville, an emancipated woman who forges a new future for herself in colonial Mexico and gets caught in the Spanish Inquisition.

Julian Samual's Muskoka (April), a romantic comedy, set in mid-Toronto and on Lake Rosseau, plays with the intersection of Indigenous, settler, and immigrant success stories against the background of mortality and the stars. A woman’s coming-of-age through a toxic relationship, isolation, and betrayal is set against the stark landscape of the far north in Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit (April), by Nadine Sander-Green. And Philipp Schott’s latest Dr. Bannerman Vet Mystery is Eleven Huskies (May), set at a remote fishing lodge in Northern Manitoba as a wildfire approaches.

In Animals in Captivity (May), with hope and hilarity, Kate Segriff transports us from speakeasies to heavy metal concerts on Hudson’s Bay, where we meet neurodiverse miners, opiate-dependent, train-riding teens, and a tree-murdering grandma. From Governor General's Award-nominated author Sheung-King comes Batshit Seven (February), a novel about a millennial living through the Hong Kong protests, as he struggles to make sense of modern life and the parts of himself that just won’t gel. And prize-winning writer Leslie Shimotakahara’s new novel Sisters of the Spruce (February) is an enthralling story of female adventure, friendship, and resilience, set against the majestic landscape of a WWI-era logging camp on Haida Gwaii.

Lightning-paced and unputdownable, J.T. Siemens' second novel, Call of the Void (March), cements Sloane Donovan's position amid the new generation of hard-boiled sleuths. Frida, childless by choice, is an artist with a heartbreaking history, and when she agrees to allow her husband's spurious daughter into their lives, they are devastatingly changed forever in A Reluctant Mother (May), by Deirdre Simon Dore. And, raised in a family of post-war Jewish refugees in Montreal, Isabel feels displaced from an early age, searching for love, purpose, and the true meaning of home from Montreal to Jerusalem and back again in Sivan Slapak's debut collection Here is Still Here (March).

Steeped in Newfoundland’s unique folklore and superstitions, A Seal of Salvage (March), by Clayton B. Smith, is a coming-of-age novel about unrequited love between adolescent boys that slips between history and mythology. From New York Times bestseller Shilpi Somaya Gowda comes A Great Country (March), exploring the ties and fractures of a close-knit Indian-American family in the aftermath of a violent encounter with the police. And tender and compassionate, The Afterpains (March), by Anna Julia Stainsby, is a moving debut novel on motherhood, grief, identity, and belonging.

The Road to Heaven (June), by Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson, is a gripping noir mystery introducing artless young detective Patrick Bird, set in Toronto’s Parkdale during the tumultuous ’60s. In funny and heartwarming office comedy I Hope This Finds You Well (May), by Natalie Sue, an admin worker accidentally gains access to her colleagues’ private emails and DMs and decides to use this intel to save her job. In the Frame (March), by Pat Sullivan, is a riotous workplace satire that toys with the machinations of a fictional Toronto gallery and reveals some awkward truths about the Canadian art world in the process.

When a young woman in 19th century Nova Scotia uncovers a magical secret about her neighbour, she’ll have to fight to keep the truth—and the woman she loves—safe in Rose Sutherland's A Sweet Sting of Salt (April), a stunning queer reimagining of the classic folktale The Selkie Wife. Brianne Sommerville's debut is If I Lose Her (March), a thriller about a new mother with postpartum depression who is fighting to keep her daughter and to stay in control of her life. And taking place over three days and culminating in a shocking twist that will leave you breathless, Twenty-Seven Minutes (January), by Ashley Tate, is a gripping story about what happens when grief becomes unbearable, dark secrets are unearthed and the horrifying truth is revealed.

Award-winning writer Drew Hayden Taylor that blends thriller, murder mystery, and horror with humour and spectacle in his new novel Cold (January). National Magazine Award-winner Jess Taylor returns with Play (April), a haunting, riveting novel that reminds us of both the beauty and danger of imagination. Susie Taylor follows up her debut, Even Weirder Than Before, with Vigil (May), interconnected stories packed with uncomfortable characters caught in situations of complex morality. And My Best Friend’s Wedding meets The Silver Linings Playbook in Never Been Better (March), Leanne Toshiko Simpson's offbeat, heartfelt comedy debut about a seaside wedding reunion where no one can stay afloat.

Brash, duplicitous women, murder and mayhem, and illicit love abound in Unrest (May), a wild adventure by debut novelist Gwen Tuinman. Bestseller Roz Nay calls Unthinkable (February), by Brent van Staalduinen, "an intelligent, propulsive chase, a must for the smart thriller reader." And in Euphoria, a small, fictional southern Ontario town displaced in time and space, a couple have vanished from their suburban home, and when the place refuse to help, their estranged friend, a local video store employee, sets off on a seemingly hopeless search for the lost lovers in Jade Wallace's novel Anomia (June).

A young Asian immigrant mends her fractured sense of self in Lily Wang’s Silver Repetition (February), a coming-of-age debut novel about family, grief, and identity. Hopeful and cautionary, Emily Weedon’s Autokrator (April) reimagines gender and power in society against the backdrop of an epic, deeply etched, speculative world. And The Beech Forest (June), by Marlis Wesseler, looks into the dark corners of the human heart, and brings us back out into the light of day with humour and compassion.

A paroled killer and a small-town cop find themselves on a collision course when the murder-by-arson of a college student sparks off gang violence along the forty-ninth parallel in Ocean Drive (April), by acclaimed bestselling novelist Sam Wiebe. Lane Winslow is back in Iona Whishaw’s latest mystery, Lightning Strikes the Silence (May), a study in bygone promises and lingering prejudice. And in her short story collection Wild Failure (May), bestselling novelist Zoe Whittall contends with the meaning of desire for both intimacy and danger in a world that questions the validity of femininity and queerness.

Withered (April), by A.G.A. Wilmot, is queer psychological horror, a compelling tale that tackles important issues of mental health in the way that only horror can: by delving deep into them, cracking them open, and exposing their gruesome entrails. Smoke (May) is award-winning children’s author Nicola Winstanley’s first work for adults, a deftly written linked short story collection that moves between New Zealand and Canada following the lives of one family and considers the impact of intergenerational trauma on them from multiple points of view. And from racetracks to hospitals, from sumptuous theatres like the Capital, and the carpeted elegance of Eaton's Grill room, to the ten stool counter at Winnipeg's first Salisbury House the reader is drawn into a city, time, and place of a decadent past in Robert Young's Murder in a Minor Key (February).